Have you ever heard the words, “we need to talk” and not felt a little uncomfortable?

In a fast-paced work environment, communication challenges come up every day. It’s natural for conflict to arise and disagreement to occur, so leaders need the skills to successfully manage emotionally charged conversations and help resolve issues between team members.

To help improve their skills in dealing with challenging conversations, Eryn Kalish, the co-creator of our Challenging Conversations program teaches leaders how to speak up without alienating the other person and how to listen even if they are “triggered” by what they are hearing.

The concepts are easily understandable, explains Kalish, but it is something that’s challenging emotionally to practice. For leaders just getting started, there are five skills represented by the acronym SPEAK that Kalish recommends as a way of becoming comfortable with, and open to, others’ feelings.

I have written before about the importance of knowing what?s truly important. The most successful people know that they control very few things that really matter. Most people spend entirely too much time on seemingly urgent ?stuff? at the expense of investing their time on things truly important.

The other major waste of time we experience is worrying about things that matter but that we have little or no control over. While we are worrying about things we cannot control we are not focused on the things that matter that we can control.

I could write thousands of words on this subject but this week a colleague of mine named Billy sent me the drawing that accompanies this post. It ?shows? what I mean better than I could ever say it. (I guess that?s where the whole ?a picture is worth a thousand words saying comes from)

Some people thrive in a chaotic environment. Panic seems to be the order their day. Who wants to handle that much drama? Who wants to be overtaken by a scattered existence? In chaos, tasks appear to be larger than most really are. Continue reading →